The Fall of the House of Romanov
by LongSnakeMoan
Summary: The revolution has overtaken Lawndale and for Elsie Sloane and the rest of her family there can only be one outcome.


"Wake up, wake up."

Elsie felt a large hand roughly shake her shoulder and it shook her roughly from her the welcome respite of her slumbers. Her mind during sleep was the only place she felt safe anymore, the place where she felt at peace. She supposed it was interesting that her nightmares had stopped the moment she and her family had been taken into custody. When they'd been on the run so to speak, the Sloanes couldn't really go on the run, she suspected they'd been watched even in the supposed safe houses, she had been plagued by nightmares. Blinded by the bright white of the torch being shone in her eyes, Elsie pulled herself up and stared up at the grizzled features of Jesse Moreno. Once she'd heard he'd been a guitarist in a band, a good looking lazy druggie apparently. Now he was one of most fervent revolutionaries that had emerged since chaos had engulfed the country. Blinking in the light, she saw her parents and brother clambering out of bed, the worn lace of her mother's battered nightgown trailed on the dusty floor and her father's pyjama pants, three sizes too big, scape against the dirt. How they had fallen from grace.

"Where are we going?" yawned Tom, looking vulnerably, frighteningly young in that perilous netherworld between sleep and the awakened state. "We were told that weren't being moved anymore."

"Times have changed, Sloane," muttered Moreno, turning away in what Elsie assumed was an attempt to give her some privacy as she tied her dressing gown around her childish nightgown, a faded Sponge Bob Square Pants grinning inanely around the squalid bedroom. "Can't you hear the guns?"

"Guns," her mother whispered in shock. "Has fighting broken out again?"

"Yeah," came a low voice from the door. As the family looked up, the painfully thin silhouette of Trent Lane was seen at the door frame across the hall. "It's all gone to shit on the outskirts of town. At least a hundred are dead, fighting between our guys and yours. Your guys started it and killed a couple of little kids who were playing cops and robbers outside their house. Our guys want blood and as the rest of your kind have fled you are the last sitting ducks and easy picking. We have to move you, unless you want to be ripped limb from limb. Follow me and Jesse, we're taking you downstairs to wait for the van. You'll go somewhere safer."

Her white faced father put his arm round Elsie and gently ushered her out of the room, whispering 'it will be okay, my most beloved girl, we will be okay' over and over again as they quietly followed Trent down the vast, echoing halls of the house, expensive paper direct from Paris peeling from the walls and covered in graffiti. Apparently it had belonged to some lawyer type, some man named Schrecter, rumours flew about his fate. Some said he was in Canada, others in Mexico or that he'd been found hanged in his office. Nobody knew. Behind Angier and Elsie, Kay gripped onto Tom's arm for comfort and support, had she tried to walk on her own Kay would have fallen to the floor and would not get up again. They went further into the house, deeper and deeper, until they ended up in the filthy basement, the air heavy with the smell of damp and urine.

"Wait in here," grunted Jesse. "The van'll be here for you in a bit."

Tom gagged and brought up a stream of clear vomit onto the floor, causing the assorted, armed revolutionaries to burst into mocking laughter. They all laughed, all apart from one. In the middle was a thin, dark haired young woman, silver earrings glinting dully in the low lights, a predatory smile on her cracked, sore lips, the red lipstick long gone. To Elsie her smile was far more deadly than any laugh from the others and ice pierced her heart as Jane's gaze never left Tom. Jane broke her stare and looked around the room, her blue eyes fixing on every member in there, before finally turning back to Angier.

"Angier Sloane, in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on the Egalitarian State of Maryland, the Lawndale Executive Committee has decided to execute you..."

"_What?_ said her father, his words coming out in a terrified stutter as he stared at his wife and children. **"**_What?"_

"Angier Sloane, in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on the Egalitarian State of Maryland, the Lawndale Executive Committee has decided to execute you..."

Jane, stepped back and raised her weapon along with the rest of her guard, nodding her head as gunfire erupted. Angier and Kay went down quickly, killed outright as the bullets riddled their bodies. Tom and Elise though, they'd taken it on themselves long ago to sew their family jewels into their clothes to save them from looting by those so different and them, and now those bullets ricocheted off them, causing only grazes and superficial wounds. Tom clutched at his father's clothes, whispering something as Jane realised the bullets hadn't finished him off. Purposefully she strode through the floor slick with blood and aimed two bullets at the back of his head, wiping out the bright light of the Sloane family from the world. Elsie, crouched against the wall, covered her heads with hands and bit back the urge to screams. Sloanes didn't scream their emotions were kept far too tightly controlled for her to let out anything as vulgar as a scream. She felt something sharp plunge in to her neck and her back and then she fell back to the darkness that mere moments ago she had never wanted to leave.


End file.
